February 4, 2011

Southwest Style & some TJ love

hiyaaa. I am on a ROLL! kinda, sorta, anyways... this week's theme is obviously "last week's menu" since I barely posted. Thinking about it, this chili would have been perfect to serve this week! It's spicy and so easy to prep. Another theme: Easy to prep! Yeaaah boy!

1) chop up onion and peppers and place into crock pot. *sidenote: I am loving this crockpot liners. they make clean up a BREEEZE!

look how bright these babies are. I had to use rubber gloves because I knew I'd wipe my eyes/face and burn all night long. ouch.

2) Rinse and pat dry the tenderloin. Remove any fat and cut into 1 inch cubes.

3) Put all ingredients into the crock pot

4) Cook low for 8 hours; high for 4 hours

While the chili was stewing, I whipped up a batch of Trader Joe's cornbread.

Look at those corn bits!

Golden brown crust :)

The cornbread was the perfect match to the chili. I've never tried the trader joe's brand but I think I have found my favorite corn bread of all time.

The chili turned out great too.

In the original recipe, it asked to include the liquid for the beans but I rinsed them. I also made a mistake by emptying the full can of chicken stock, when I only needed a cup. This caused the chili to be a little runny—more soupish. But it was still tasty.

The extra pepper (not sure what kind it was) wasn’t as spicy as the jalepeno but it did add some good color.

All & all, a pretty good meal. Like I said before, perfect to keep it for a snowy day.

In non-food related news, I totally figured out how to size/edit all my photos at once on Photoshop. Yeah, I'm probably behind in the times, but I use to love editing and playing around with Photoshop and haven't so much anymore. But this is wonderful! Saves me the trouble of %-sizing everything in wordpress. Brilliant!